Cairn Energy invested around $7 billion in 2010 and 2011 in a
series of projects that turned out to be unsuccessful. Now the
interest has cooled as the company closed its office in Greenland
in the New Year and has no plans to reopen it. The company
slashed its workforce by about 40 percent and shifted its focus
to West Africa from Greenland.

The outflow of investment is a tough blow for Greenland’s
ambitions of becoming a mining center. In 2011, the country which
is run as part of Denmark, earned $392 million in taxes from oil
exploration. This compares to the total Danish budget of $39
billion.

“Given the current situation on the market together with the
fact that Greenland is an area with very little infrastructure,
rather large environmental requirements and a very challenging
environment, it will be very expensive to develop these
fields," said John Finborud, Director of GDF Suez Greenland.

Statoil has chosen to focus on the Barents Sea in western Norway
and other places where the chances of winning are higher, said
the company’s spokesperson Knut Rostad to Politiken magazine.

"When we have to evaluate the different licenses in the
company's portfolio, we look at the global situation and
prioritize the projects that have the best potential," he
explained.

Although there’s still going to be a focus on attracting
interested oil companies, the time has come to diversify natural
sources, Birger Poppel, research project chief from the
University of Greenland told RT. He says the goal of Greenland
will be to develop other economic fields, such as the mining
industry, and still focus on oil.

“There’s a population of 65,000 people here, so I think the
concern will be to develop different kinds of economic
activities,” he said.

The oil prices have seen the largest drop in six years with both
Brent and WTI below $46 per barrel. Brent crude was trading at
$45.79 a barrel at 12:15 MSK Wednesday; the price for WTI was
$45.21.

Richard Wolff, economics professor at the University of
Massachusetts, told RT “the continuous race between OPEC and
the US,” was the major reason of the oil drop.